I E 

I m 



GERMANS IN AMERICA 



BY 

LUCIUS B. SWIFT 

OF THE INDIANAPOLIS BAR 



READ BEFORE THE INDIANAPOLIS 
LITERARY CLUB. OCTOBER 4. 1915 



FOURTH EDITION 



First Edition. 5,000. November. 1915. 

Second Edition. 10,000, January. 1916. 

Third Edition. 15,000. July, 1916. 

Fourth Edition, 10.000. September. 1916. 

PRICE. TEN CENTS 

THE KAUTZ STATIONERY CO. 
INDIANAPOLIS 
1916 






FOREWORD 

The National German-American Alliance, devoted 
to Germanizing America, now sixteen years old and 
claiming two million members, challenges the Ameri- 
can people with its slogan, "Germanism versus 
Anglo-Saxonism." In all that makes for liberty 
Germanism has no background, while the sky of 
Anglo-Saxonism for fifteen hundred years has light- 
ed the path of the mighty progress embraced in the 
words of Kipling: 



"All we have of freedom, all we use or know — 
This our fathers bought for us long and long ago. 

Ancient right unnoticed as the breath we draw — 
Leave to live by no man's leave, underneath the law. 

Lance and torch and tumult, steel and gray goose wing 
Wrenched it, inch and ell and all, slowly from the king." 



Americans may not hesitate to accept the chal- 
lenge; and with them will stand every immigrant 
and every descendant of an immigrant from Scandi- 
navia to the Balkans and from the Balkans to Italy, 
except these two million Germans of the Alliance. 
All will maintain that, not Germanism, but Anglo- 
Saxon principles shall abide here forever. 






GERMANS IN AMERICA 



Since the beginning of the present war we have had 
to bear a good deal from Germans in America in their 
attempt to show us how little we have accomplished in 
the world compared with Germany. The Kaiser said 
that the Germans were the salt of the earth and Ger- 
mans in America have taken him at his word and have 
not been slow to let us know about it. So far as he^rd 
from, there is not in their mind a question but that 
our system of government and our merits and accom- 
plishments as inhabitants of the earth are far inferior 
to the same things in Germany. It seems to me that 
something can be said on the other side and, further, 
that a little plain speaking would befit the occasion, 
and, as an old friend of the Germans, I mean to do 
something in that line. 

The Germans in Germany and Germans even to the 
second and third generations in America are genuinely 
surprised because Americans have no sympathy with 
the German government in this war, and because after 
witnessing its enormous military power, Americans 
consider the present style of German government a 
menace to civil liberty. 

On the other hand Americans are not only surprised 
that such sympathy should be expected but are as- 
tonished that it should be expected by any German in 
America who has been here long enough to understand 
the foundations of our institutions, to say nothing of 
those Germans of the second and third and even more 
generations who were born and educated in this coun- 

Thrae 



try. Judged by those who speak out, these technically 
American citizens, and among them many graduates 
of our leading universities, believe in the Kaiser and 
long for his success; they approve of his rule in Ger- 
many; they find no flaw in his treatment of Belgium; 
they openly justify the drowning of the passengers 
and crew of the Lusitania; they see in the Kaiser a 
Moses leading the Germans into the Promised Land ; 
and to crown all, they prefer Prussian efficiency to 
American liberty. If they had lived among the landed 
aristocracy of Prussia, they would not have held more 
extreme notions. This chasm between us, no genuine 
American will ever cross.* 



* Mr. Oswald Garrison Yillard, in an address Sept. 4, 1915, before the 
Laurel Hill Association at Stockbridge, says: "Thus, in a little volume of 
addresses published early in 1914 — that is, a half-year before the outbreak 
of the war in Elurope, Prof. Julius Goebel, of the University of Ulinois, a 
resident of the United States and a university teacher here for "more than 
thirty years, laj's down the doctrine that Germans who come here are not 
to be made over into Americans by the melting-pot of which we have been 
io proud. In his book, 'The Battle for German Culture in America,' he 
emphatically rejects this proposal and as'^erts that German- Americans are 
only Americans in the 'political sense'^and only in that sen.'je — when they 
take the oath of citizenship. Most emphatically he protests against the 
'incredible presumption' of those who would stamp out 'our German person- 
ality in the mould of a factory-made type of people.' " ♦ » * 

"He declares that every thoughtful person, as well as every cynic, was 
asking as far back as 1912 whether the American people could much longer 
govern itself. Almost every expedient to improve our condition had been 
tried and found wanting, he averred, and there had not been lacking dema- 
gogues to recommend a further extension of the democracy, a further trust- 
ing in the people, as a cure-all for our political evils." ♦ » • 

"He has a remedy. It is the German who is to step into the breach 
with German Kultur, with German sense of duty and of honor to save 
America from itself, and to bring about a new birth of the nation." 

Four 



The Mark of Brandenburg was no part of ancient 
Germany but was conquered from the Slavs in 928. 
Prussia was a no-man's land given to the Teutonic 
Knights in 1300 to be converted to Christianity by fire 
and sword. The first Hohenzollern came from a hill 
named Zollern in Suabia. He married the daughter 
and heir of the Burgrave of Nuremberg, and then be- 
came Burgrave himself. The title descended until it 
came to a Hohenzollern who wanted to go higher, and 
he bought the Mark of Brandenburg from the Emperor 
Sigismund for a half-million gulden. Sigismund, 
when King of Hungary, had already mortgaged and 
forfeited Brandenburg to another man, but he brushed 
that aside and sold it to Hohenzollern. It was that 
Hohenzollern who the Kaiser says was called by God 
from Nuremberg to Brandenburg and from that call 
the present Kaiser derives his rule by divine right. 
The Teutonic Knights having conquered Prussia be- 
came insubordinate and unruly, and a succeeding Ho- 
henzollern of Brandenburg was given the job by a 
German Emperor of bringing them to reason, which he 
did in a thoroughly Hohenzollern manner, with fire and 
sword. He was now elector of Brandenburg and 
Duke of Prussia. These two provinces not orig- 
inally German territory at all, but colonized by Ger- 
mans, who mixed much Slavic blood, were com- 
bined into the Kingdom of Prussia. The rule has 
always been and is today autocratic. Today Prussia 
rules Germany ; during the forty-four years under 
the imperial constitution Prussia has never failed to 
have her way. What is the Prussian way? 

In a proclamation, "To My Army," in 1901, the 
Kaiser said : "The world does not rest upon the shoul- 
ders of Atlas any more securely than the Prussian 

Five 



State upon the shoulders of the Army. It has sealed 
with its blood its love and gratitude for its Kings." 
In 1912 in a speech at Brandenburg the Kaiser said: 
"The German Empire and the German crown rest 
upon a Brandenburg basis and a Prussian founda- 
tion." With all that this means, Germans in America 
accept it and approve of it and display the same kind 
of infatuation for the Kaiser that the French had for 
Napoleon Bonaparte, and they think that Americans 
ought to partake of their enthusiasm. Americans are 
immeasurably disappointed to find that Germans in 
America have never learned that the line drawn from 
the America of today back to Hengest and Horsa in 
449 never approaches the line drawn from the Ger- 
many of today back to the Brandenburg conquered 
from the Slavs in 928 and to the Prussia given to the 
Teutonic Knights in 1300. The Anglo-Saxon line is 
blazed by the marks of an undying struggle for gov- 
ernment by the people, culminating in the democratic 
liberty we enjoy today. From the highest to the lowest 
our officers are our agents, bound and limited by our 
laws ; we are the masters and we have supreme con- 
tempt for any authority which we have had no hand 
in establishing. Our spirit is free and finds an outlet 
in free speech and a free press. We started free- 
necked men and we are free-necked men now. All this 
apparently has no weight today with Germans in 
America. 

The German line runs for centuries in an unbroken 
monotony of submission by the people to authority 
they had no hand in establishing and to laws thev had 
no hand in making. The line ends today in the 
Kaiser's "Brandenburg basis and Prussian founda- 
tion." In conquered Brandenburg and Prussia the 



Germans started under the yoke, and under the yoke 
all Germany is today. There is in the German line no 
Magna Charta, no John Hampden, no Oliver Crom- 
well, no axe in the hands of the people descending on 
the neck of a traitor king, no king driven from his 
throne for betraying his trust, no Bill of Rights, no 
Declaration of Independence, no Minute Man, no 
Liberty Bell, no George Washington, no Abraham 
Lincoln. Of all these marks blazed during the cen- 
turies Germans in America today are apparently 
oblivious. 

Yet, we started even. If we go back to the Germans 
in the German forests, the lines do meet ; for German 
tribes were self-governing. "No man dictates to the 
assembly", says Tacitus ; "he may persuade, but can- 
not command." The Angles, the Saxons, the Jutes and 
the Frisians, uncontaminated by Rome, carried into 
England the ancient German freedom, the town moot, 
the hundred moot, the folk moot. They swept Roman 
England free of inhabitants and of Christianity. 
When the movement was completed, a nation of Ger- 
mans occupied England, the only German nation re- 
sulting from the migration of the barbarians. They 
were pagans and Odin was their god. These were our 
forefathers. Out of this pagan German nation has 
come the English-speaking race of today. Although a 
multitude of times crushed to earth, they never forgot 
their republican institutions, their mass township- 
meetings, .heir delegate-meetings, and never lost their 
capacity to transact public business. War brought the 
king, but the king could not shake off the Wittenage- 
mote, nor its successor, the English Parliament. In 
their meetings the kicker kicked out his kick ; there the 
officers, even the king, were called to account ; there for 

Seven 



centuries was carried on that stubborn fight of the peo- 
ple against oppression. These facts, today, apparently 
make no impression upon Germans in America. 

It is not necessary to trace how or when the Germans 
in Germany lost their liberties; they lost them. We 
find them in the eighteenth century under all manner 
of potentates, and in every case the will of the poten- 
tate is the law of his territory. This had been so, 
century after century, with no voice raised on behalf 
of the people; while during all those centuries the 
Anglo-Saxons were carrying on their mighty struggle 
to maintain and extend civil rights. 

The sending of German troops to fight against 
American independence is a sufficient illustration of 
the ownership of the lives and bodies of their subjects 
by the German rulers of that time. Twenty-nine thou- 
sand one hundred sixty-six Germans came. Six rulers 
sold their men. Catherine of Russia refused and Hol- 
land refused. Bavaria wanted a contract; but her men 
were such a worthless lot that her application was re- 
jected. The transaction was like a sale of cattle by a 
ranchman. Each ruler got the best contract he could 
and then filled it with men exactly as he would go into 
a field and separate cattle sold. The ruler of iianau 
wrote: "My regiment is all ready at the first twinkle 
that shall be given me," and hurried off to England 
to push the matter. The Prince of Waldeck collected 
eighty-nine men and locked them up in the fortress of 
Hameln ready for delivery. England paid the wages 
of the troops. The Duke of Brunswick sold 5,723 men, 
more than one-sixth of his able-bodied inhabitants. He 
got for his own pocket $34.50 for each man, as a 
starter, and for each man killed and each three 
wounded he got the same sum. Finally he got an 

Eight 



annual lump sum of 64,500 German crowns and 
twice that sum for two years after the return of the 
troops. 

The landgrave of Hesse fairly skinned England and 
got a contract whereby he sent 16,992 men and made 
millions of dollars; and the other rulers sold their men 
with great profit to themselves. For this service men 
were impressed from the plow, the workshop and the 
highway; no man was safe from the agents of the 
princes who kidnapped without scruple. Men were 
kept under guard and were marched to the ships under 
guard to keep them from deserting. When a father 
asked for his son taken by conscription, he was sent to 
the mines. When a mother asked that her son be 
returned to her, she was sent to the workhouse. George 
Washington Greene characterizes the act of each of 
these rulers by a line from Dante : 

"He sells their flesh, it being yet alive." 

Is it necessary to use more words to show that liber- 
ty in Germany was dead? A people who submit to be 
sent like cattle to the shambles have reached the lowest 
stage of submission to autocratic rule. Against these 
mercenaries the American farmer took down his rifle 
and brought their activities to an end at Trenton, at 
Bennington, at Saratoga and finally, with the help of 
the French, at Yorktown. 

Then c.me Napoleon Bonaparte. When he began 
to totter, the King of Prussia and the other princes of 
Germany promised their subjects that if they would 
rise and rid the world of Bonaparte they should then 
have some share in government. The people performed 
their part, but the rulers, after renewing their promise 

Nine 



in writing, went on as before ; and the people submit- 
ted. These rulers had for centuries fought and con- 
quered each other, but they had had no trouble with 
their subjects demanding a share in government. 
They said they held by divine right, and their subjects 
submitted; whatever they allowed their subjects was 
pure grace. When the landgrave of Hesse was driving 
his subjects to the American shambles, he wrote to 
Voltaire that he wanted to learn the art of making 
men perceive that "all which their ruler does is for 
their special good." The motto of King William III, 
of Prussia, was "I hold my crown by the favor of 
God, and I am responsible to him for every hour of 
my government." And so he broke his word and lived 
on hugging his autocratic power until he died in 1840. 

The principles of the American Revolution and of 
the patriots of the French Revolution at last began to 
be known in Germany. Most of the people were not 
interested ; but here and there professors and student 
bodies talked of freedom, although no one was ready 
to give his life for it. In 1817 the students at Wart- 
burg burned some conservative books and the code 
Napoleon. Autocracy was nervous and made severer 
laws against such demonstrations for liberty. In 1832, 
at a great student- festival, toasts were drunk to the 
sovereignty of the people, to the United States of 
Germany, and to Europe Republican. Autocracy was 
furious and Prussia condemned thirty-nine students 
to death. The penalty was not inflicted, but the stu- 
dents were confined in a fortress. 

Carl Schurz was in the gymnasium in Cologne in the 

forties. His class was to write on the battle of 
Leipsic. Schurz emphasized the ill-treatment of the 
people by the rulers in refusing to keep the promise 



of a share in the government made to the people for 
their heroic efforts on that battle field. He says: "I 
wrote that memorial oration, so to speak, with my 
heart's blood." His professor called him up and said : 
"What you wrote has a fine sound, but how can such 
things be allowed at a royal Prussian gymnasium? 
Take care that it does not happen again." 

Schurz was nineteen when the movement of 1848 
came to a head — the only uprising of the people where 
they took chances and risked lives for free government 
in German history. Frederick William IV, the Hohen- 
zollern King of Prussia at that time, declared that he 
would never permit a piece of paper to be put between 
the prince and his people; he said the people them- 
selves did not desire participation of their representa- 
tives in the government; the absolute power of the 
King must not be broken ; "the crown must reign and 
govern according to the laws of God and of the coun- 
try and according to the King's own resolutions ;" he 
could not and must not "govern according to the will 
of majorities." 

The uprising of 1848 was real. The demand, says 
Schurz, was for a united Germany and a national par- 
liament ; for civil rights and liberties, free speech, free 
press, the right of free assembly, equality before the 
law, a freely elected representation of the people with 
legislative power, responsibility of ministers, self-gov- 
ernment of the communes, the right of the people to 
carry arrrs, in fact a "constitutional form of govern- 
ment on a broad democratic basis." Autocracy at first 
seemed to yield. A national German parliament was 
elected and sat at Frankfort. It adopted a constitu- 
tion and in March, 1849, it elected the king of Prussia 
to be Kaiser. He refused on the ground that the offer 



of the national crown could only come from the Ger- 
man princes. This broke the back of the movement; 
there were uprisings in many places in support of the 
constitution, but they were put down by soldiers. 
Many were put on trial and condemned ; Schurz and 
others fled the country, and Germany was back again 
under autocratic government. 

Until within recent years Germans in America uni- 
versally spoke with reverence of the forty-eighters. It 
was in the spirit of '48 that they joined in the war for 
the Union ; they were genuine in that war and did the 
best they could. And they lived in the same spirit 
afterward, proud to be called Americans and looking 
upon America as veritably the home of the free ; and 
then they fell. They fell before the glamour of Bis- 
marck's government by blood and iron, before the 
spectacle of great material prosperity, before the hyp- 
notism of the doctrines Will to Power, Will to Con- 
quer, Might is Right, the Strong may take from the 
Weak, German Arms and the German Language can 
be made to dominate the world. Today the moderate 
ideals of the Germans of 1848 are lost in the blaze of 
the glory of the Kaiser. No one hates the ideals of 
1848 more than he does. In 1901, referring to the 
revolt in Berlin in 1848 when speaking to the Alex- 
ander regiment which had helped to crush it, he said : 
" * * * and if ever again a time like this should 
reappear in this city, a time of uprising against the 
King, then I am convinced the Alexander Regiment 
will be able energetically to force back into boimds 
any impertinence and rebellion against its royal mas- 
ter." This is the Kaiser's inscription upon the tomb- 
stone of the liberal movement of 1848. 



When an American stands at Concord and looks 
upon the Minute Man where "once the embattled far- 
mers stood and fired the shot heard round the world," 
why does it make his eyes shine and his blood go at 
a gallop? 

When the Declaration of Independence was adopted 
a bell rang out from the belfry of Independence Hall. 
That bell bore the inscription, "Proclaim Liberty 
throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants there- 
of." That was 139 years ago. That bell, the Liberty 
Bell, has just gone on its triumphant march across the 
country. Women rode fifty miles on horseback to see 
the bell ; children were lifted up to kiss the bell ; strong 
men touched the bell and tears filled their eyes. 

If Germans in America will examine with German 
thoroughness the picture of the Kaiser, threatening 
the people with the Alexander regiment, should they 
emulate the Schurzes, the Kinkels and Jacobis of 1848 
by insisting upon a reasonable share in their own 
government, these Germans ought to understand the 
meaning of the Minute Man and the Liberty Bell to 
Americans, and why Americans would like to see the 
Kaiser's system of government consigned to the finest 
grinding of the mills of the gods. 

What Germans in America have embraced in place 
of their abandoned American political ideals only 
widens the chasm between America and Germany. 
The German Empire today consists of states bound 
together jy an agreement called a constitution made, 
not by the people, but by the rulers of the states in 
1871, at the end of the Franco-Prussian war. The 
states also have constitutions granted by the various 
rulers beginning in 1830 ; the present Prussian consti- 
tution was granted by William IV in 1850. Under 

Thirteen 



that constitution William, the Kaiser's grandfather, 
in 18G1 went into the church in Koenigsburg, picked 
up the crown from the altar, placed it upon his own 
head and declared in a loud voice: "1 receive this 
crown from God's hand and from none other." 

Bismarck says that the Prussian constitution was 
drawn with such veto provisions as to protect the 
status quo. In the Imperial constitution of 1871, the 
veto has the same effect. The status quo was auto- 
cratic and there has been no change. The character of 
the imperial constitution is defined by German states- 
men. The Crown Prince Frederick expecting the death 
of his father, asked Bismarck if he would remain in 
office in case of a change on the throne. Bismarck says 
he answered that he would on two conditions, the first 
of which was "no parliamentary government." 

Ex-Chancellor von Buelow, in his Imperial Ger- 
many, written in 1913, states the facts. He says: 

"Bismarck, the Prussian, realized better than anyone 
else that in Germany strong government could only be 
based and maintained on the monarchical principle. The 
work of union could only be permanent if the monarchy 
was not a purely ornamental part of the fabric of the 
Empire, but was made to be the actual support of tlie 
union. And if the creative power of the Prussian mon- 
archy, well tested in the course of centuries, was to be 
enlisted in the interests of the new Empire, then the King 
of Prussia must, as German Emperor, be more than the 
bearer of shadowy dignities; he must rule and guide — and 
for this purpose must actually possess monarc'iicn,' rio.hts 
such as have been laid down and transcribed in the Con- 
stitution of the Empire." 

Von Buelow says further : 

Fotirtfeit 



"The statement uttered from time to time, that my idea 
was to change the distribution of power between the 
Crown and the Parliament in favour of the latter, that is, 
to introduce parliamentary government in the West Euro- 
pean sense of the words, belongs to the thickly populated 
realm of political fables." 

He also says : 

"What we Germans need can not be attained -by alter- 
ations in the sphere of constitutional law. The parties 
which would acauire greater rights to a large extent still 
lack political judgment, political training, and conscious- 
ness of the aims of the State." 

This is a roundabout way of saying that autocracy 
still has its way, and that the German people would 
not know enough to rule if they had the power. Price 
Collier, who, though not a German, knew the working 
of German government as well as anyone, said in 1913 : 
"There is no such thing in Germany as democratic or 
representative government." "* * * Germany today 
is no more democratic than Turkey was twenty years 
ago." The German historian Gneist says it is "abso- 
lutism under constitutional forms." 

The imperial constitution is arranged on the prin- 
ciple of the jughandle, and the ruler never lets go of 
the handle. If the ruler decides to take away what he 
has granted, who shall gainsay him with the army to 
back him? The Kaiser's grandfather set him the ex- 
ample. Under the Prussian constitution, which is 
another status g-wo- jughandle constitution, in 1861, 
Bismarck and the King wanted to enlarge the army, 
but the legislature refused the money. They spent the 
money just the same, saying, that the legislature by 
refusing to vote necessary supplies had laid down its 

Fifteen 



functions and the King must take over the responsi- 
bilities which they dechned to exercise. Having defied 
the constitution four years and spent the money, in 
1866, after the seizure of Schleswig-Holstein and the 
victory over Austria, the speech from the throne an- 
nounced, says Bismarck, "that the representatives of 
the country were to proceed to an ex post facto ap- 
proval of the administration carried on without appro- 
priation act." The legislature obeyed the order almost 
with gratitude for the opportunity. An Anglo-Saxon 
legislature would have shaken the King over hell-fire, 
would have brought him to his knees in repentance, 
would have made him reaffirm every declaration of 
Anglo-Saxon freedom from Magna Charta to the Bill 
of Rights before granting forgiveness. 

WHiat does the present Kaiser say of that violation 
of the constitution? In 1894, speaking to his troops 
at Berlin, he said: "In the year 1861 when my grand- 
father undertook the reorganization of his arms, he 
was misunderstood by many and attacked by even 
more; nevertheless, the future gave him his splendid 
justification. Just as at that time, so now, too, distrust 
and discord are rife among the people. The only 
pillar upon which the empire rested was the army. So it 
is today." 

The Kaiser feels no regret for the violation. He does 
not dodge behind any plea of necessity, but he gives 
the world to understand that his divine right backed 
by the army is all sufficient as against any constitution, 
and there is neither in the German constitution nor in 
any German law any provision calling the Kaisei 
or his ministers to account. He says he is accountable 
only to God. ^'i.n ^.»il>i'|" 

Sitlteen 



In 1689 the House of Commons drew up the Bill of 
Rights. The House of Lords agreed to it and then 
William and Mary agreed to it and then they were de- 
clared King and Queen. Then to clinch the matter 
the Bill of Rights was enacted into law and is found 
in the statutes of William and Mary. The Kaiser's 
father died June 15, 1888, and on that day the present 
Kaiser seated himself upon the throne and issued an 
address, not to the people, but to the army. What 
German thought of insisting that before he mounted 
the throne he must agree to a Bill of Rights such as 
William and Mary had agreed to 200 years before? 
The habit of staying under the yoke inherited from 
generation to generation is present in the German 
people today. No wonder the Anglo-Saxon holds his 
head high and looks upon Germans without any polit- 
ical respect as having accomplished nothing for civil 
liberty. The Germans will not sit on the stage in 
W^alhalla ; that place will be occupied by Anglo-Saxons 
— their reward for having preserved their liberties. 

It will be interesting now to examine further the 
Kaiser's notion of his government and what he means 
by his Brandenburg basis and Prussian foundation. 
He says, addressing the army the day his father died : 



"It is in these serious days of mourning that God's will 
places me at the head of the army and it is from a heart 
stirred deeply, indeed, that I address my first words to my 
troops." * * 



"The absolutely inviolable dependence upon the war 
lord is, in the army, the inheritance which descends from 
father to son, from generation to generation," * * * 



"So we are bound together — I and the army — so we are 
born for one another, and so we shall hold together in- 
dissolubly whether, as God wills, we are to have peace or 
storm." 

To Recruits : 

"You wear the uniform of the Emperor; you are thereby 
preferred over other men." * * * 

"Hold your colors high, the black, white and red which 
here stand before you, and think of your oath, think of 
your emperor." 

To Recruits : 

"Whoever offends against the uniform of the King lays 
himself open to the most grievous punishments. Wear 
your uniform in such wise that you will compel respect 
from the world and from those who oppose you." * * * 



"It is now your task to stand faithfully by me and to 
defend our highest possessions, whether against enemies 
from without or from within, and to obey when I command 
and never to forsake me." 



To Potsdam Regiments : 

"Every one lacked confidence in me; everywhere I was 
falsely judged. One alone believed in me, one alone had 
faith — that was the army. And leaning upon her, trusting 
upon our old guard, I took up my heavy charge, knowing 
well that the army was the main support of my country, 
the main support of the Prussian throne, to which the de- 
cision of God had called me." 

"May the main supports of our army remain forever 
intact. They are courage, sense of honor, and uncondi- 
tional, iron, blind obedience." 

Eighteen 



To the Berlin garrison : 

"I hope to be in a position, firmly trusting in the lead- 
ership of God, to carry into effect the saying of Frederick 
William I: 'If one wishes to decide anything in the world, 
it cannot be done with the pen unless the pen is supported 
by the force of the sword.' " 

In an address at Koenigsberg in August, 1910, the 
Kaiser said : 



"Here it was that the Great Elector, by his own right, 
created himself the sovereign Duke in Prussia; here his 
son set the King's crown upon his head; and the sovereign 
house of Brandenburg thus became one of the European 
powers." * * * 

"And here my grandfather, again, by his own right, set 
the Prussian crown upon his head, once more distinctly 
emphasizing the fact that it was accorded him by the will 
of God alone and not by parliament or by any assemblage 
of the people or by popular vote, and that he thus looked 
upon himself as the chosen instrument of Heaven and as 
such performed his duties as regent and sovereign." 

Again he said : 

"Only one is master in the country. That am I. Who 
opposes me I shall crush to pieces." 

Again : 

"That wnich was lacking to the old Hansa — a strong, 
united Empire, obedient to one will — we now have, thanks 
to the grace of Heaven and the deeds of my grandfather." 

This is the Kaiser's picture of German government. 
If Americans looked upon it with approval, their birth- 

Nine.teen 



right of 1,500 years of Anglo-Saxon struggle for 
liberty would indeed go for a mess of pottage. 

It would be incorrect to say that the Kaiser never 
speaks except to rally his soldiers. He speaks upon re- 
ligion, philosophy, art, and other subjects. In a letter, 
in 1903, he said that God reveals Himself through the 
human race and mentions Charlemagne and his own 
grandfather, but neither Washington nor Lincoln. In 
a speech at Stettin, in 1898, he said : "But I, as lord of 
the land, and King, express my thanks to you that you 
have brought the city of Stettin to such a flourishing 
position." 

The Kaiser is not insane, although in a world filled 
as this has been for a hundred years with democratic 
progress he might seem so. He has an object in view 
and he knows what he is about. He wants to retain 
for himself and his descendants the job of ruling the 
Germans, and he wants to continue to do it in a medi- 
eval manner. He is carrying on his campaign to con- 
vince Germans that he can rule them better than they 
can rule themselves. He always dresses like a warrior 
and in a loud voice sounds alarms and calls upon his 
army to be ready. He and his six sons ride through 
the streets of Berlin together in brilliant uniforms, and 
everyone has seen the picture of the Kaiser and these 
sons marching abreast, all boots, overcoat, sword and 
spiked helmet; military swagger is accepted by the 
people as wholesome government. For twenty-five 
years the Kaiser has sown the seed and the German 
nation has succumbed. It follows him now without 
question; the spirit of feudalism reigns, with the full 
approval of Germans in America. They encourage the 
Germans in Germany to stay under the yoke. This is 

Twenty 



what Germans in America have embraced in place of 
American poUtical ideals ; but this is not all. 

Rosa Luxemburg is a socialist orator in Germany. 
Not long ago the Prussian minister of war laid an in- 
formation against her for libeling the officers and non- 
commissioned officers of the army in charging them 
with acts of cruelty. The court held that Rosa must 
prove that the acts occurred not in one but in many 
German barracks daily. On the day set for trial Rosa 
came into court and ofifered to prove 1,030 cases by 
witnesses who had endured the cruel treatment or had 
seen it inflicted. The case was adjourned and never 
resumed. The cruelties consisted in slaps in the face, 
punches and kicks, beating with sheathed sabres and 
bayonets, with riding whips, harness straps, and so on. 
There were cases of humiliating punishment such as 
turning the men out of bed and making them climb to 
the top of cupboards or sweep out the dormitory with 
tooth-brushes. So do Germans submit to blows and 
insults from masters. 

At another investigation one sergeant was accused 
of over 500 cases of maltreatment. A captain under 
whom a non-commissioned officer had committed 1,500 
cases of ill-treatment was punished for allowing these 
acts to occur and later was advanced to the rank of 
major over the heads of a line of seniors. 

The Zabern case in 1913 is known to the whole 
world. A raw lieutenant addressing his company ap- 
plied an offensive term to the people of Alsace, and 
offered a prize of ten marks to those who should suc- 
ceed in running a civilian through with side arms. 
These facts became public and when he appeared with 
his men he was jeered at by boys who ran when chased ; 
but he caught a lame shoemaker and cut him over the 

Twenty-one 



head with his sword. Troops were called out, machine 
guns placed in the streets, the colonel proclaimed 
martial law and arrested a large number of municipal 
officers and private citizens, imprisoning thirty of 
them in a cellar. In the investigation which followed 
the colonel said that civilians had been arrested "for 
intending to laugh." The Crown Prince telegraphed 
to the colonel "Go it strong!" The colonel and the 
lieutenant were both acquitted and in a short time the 
colonel received a Prussian Order. The lieutenant 
was last month killed in battle. The Crown Prince 
sent a wreath for his grave and a letter to his family 
lauding him as a patriot. 

How long would such things be in an Anglo-Saxon 
community? It will be answered that all Germany 
protested against these acts, and so it did ; but what 
good did it do? The struggle was recognized as one 
between the people and the military caste ; and the caste 
won. The Reichstag censured the outrage by a vote of 
293 to 54 : the colonel received a decoration and a re- 
actionary Prussian bureaucrat was made governor of 
Alsace-Lorraine ; and the people submitted and are 
now fighting as one man with the approval of Germans 
in America to spread German kultur over the world. 

Social legislation has been carried to a great extent 
in Germany. It was expected that Socialists as a body 
would gratefully melt away and become part of the 
great mass of people liking to be ruled. But under the 
name Social Democrats they wanted a share in the 
government and they occupy to-day about the position 
of liberals in other countries. Speaking to striking 
miners in May, 1889, the Kaiser said : "For me every 
Social Democrat is synonymous with an enemy of the 
realm and of the Fatherland." And in 1913 ex- 

Twenty-tH:o 



Chancellor von Buelow said: "It is the duty of every 
German Minister to combat this movement until it is 
defeated or materially changed." 

In November, 1891, in addressing recruits, the 
Kaiser said : "You have sworn loyalty to me ; that 
means, children of my guard, that you are now my 
soldiers ; you have given yourselves up to me, body and 
soul ; there is for you but one enemy, and that is my 
enemy. In view of the present Socialistic agitation it 
may come to pass that I shall command you to shoot 
your own relatives, brothers, yes, parents — which God 
forbid — but even then you must follow my command 
without a murmur." 

The Kaiser has the power to make good his threat. 
Since the German navy produced an officer who would 
execute the order to sink the Lusitania with its crew 
and its 1,000 passengers, including 130 children, all 
defenceless, the world may conclude that the Kaiser's 
soldiers, at his command, will shoot down their own 
fathers and mothers. 

It is a relief to turn from this ruler to a classic 
illustration of American political ideals. In 1783, 
after the last British and German soldier had em- 
barked, Washington bade farewell to his generals in 
New York and went quietly through New Jersey, 
Pennsylvania and Maryland, hailed everywhere by 
the people with acclamations and addresses, to the Con- 
tinental Congress at Annapolis. There, on December 
23, he resigned his commission as commander-in-chief 
into the hands of Congress. It was for this act that 
the father of Carl Schurz told him that Washington 
was "the noblest of men of all history because he had 
commanded large armies in the war for the liberation 
of his people," and then had returned to the plow as a 

Twenty-three 



simple farmer. Why is Washington first in the hearts 
of his countrymen, and why does his fame go sounding 
down generation after generation? If Germans in 
America will examine this question with German 
thoroughness and get a correct answer, then they will 
understand why Americans will never, never wish suc- 
cess to German kultur with its divine right of kings 
and military autocracy ; and no efficiency, inseparable 
from such company, will ever appeal to Americans. 

Germans in America today belittle Treitschke. They 
tell us that this advocate of the doctrine that might 
is right and that small nations have no rights which 
strong nations are bound to respect is not followed in 
Germany. Yet for thirty years he was the leading 
professor of history in Germany; his classes were 
crowded and he was the most quoted historian in Ger- 
many ; and his doctrines and his manner of stating 
them secured him a promotion to the University of 
Berlin, where he held his place until he died in 1890. 
It is too late for Germans to deny that he was a proph- 
et, since his doctrines have now passed into the stage 
of blood and iron, and the battle for them is supported 
by Germans in America. After all, he but followed all 
German historians who were ranked by Germans as 
great. Niebuhr held up Rome as "the model of na- 
tional development." "The true destiny of Prussia," 
said Ranke, "is to be and remain a 'military monarchy. 
It is impossible not to submit to what is historically 
due." Mommsen spread Caesarism in Germany, and 
Sybel. a Forty-Eighter, after the war successes under 
Bismarck went completely over to autocracy. Treit- 
schke with readier pen and more eloquent tongue only 
elaborated and rounded out the skeleton doctrines 
shaped by his predecessors ; and Bernhardi, now a gen- 

Twenty-four 



eral in active service, only states those doctrines a 
little more in the raw. These men cannot be repudi- 
ated. The principles they advocate are held and at 
least temporarily believed in by most Germans and 
are part of the kultur of which they are boasting. 

That Germans in America, legally American citizens, 
bound, as most of them are, by the closest ties of 
relationship with Germans in Germany, should love 
the people of Germany is entirely commendable and to 
be respected. That they should feel the deepest an- 
guish on account of differences between this country 
and Germany can be understood. But when they go 
farther, as the majority of them do, and desire the 
success of the military autocracy which brought on this 
war, they are joining in a movement to block the 
progress of civil liberty in the world. And Germans 
who are furious and insolent and insulting toward 
Americans who do not agree with them expect Ameri- 
cans to bear in silence such Copperhead utterances as 
the following which was received with loud acclaim by 
the National German-American Alliance : 



"We have no right to sit in judgment upon other na- 
tions until our own actions are above reproach. Germany- 
has been instrumental in sinking the Lusitania; she was 
provoked to do so by England. But by far the greatest 
blame for this horrible catastrophe attaches to the United 
States. The underlying cause was our greed for gold." 

This Alliance, an organization devoted to the spread 
of German kultur in the United States, declares: "As 
citizens of this country we therefore deem it our duty 
to maintain American independence and principles." 
The principles which were established when the last of 

Tu'etity-five 



the 29,166 German mercenaries were captured at York- 
town, cannot be maintained side by side with the prin- 
ciples of the mihtary autocracy which this organiza- 
tion represents in America. Not all Germans in 
America undertake this double allegiance; but those 
who do are not Americans, they are not German- 
Americans, although born here ; they are only Germans 
in America.* How little Germans understand Ameri- 
cans ! When they ask us to believe that the present 
day Germany ought to succeed in this war, they are 
asking us to pray for a country which may be used by 
the Kaiser whenever he wills for just such purposes as 
Frederick the Great used Prussia when he seized 
Silesia ; and they as little understand the American 
spirit as the Kaiser did when he thought we would 
appreciate a statue of Frederick the Great set up in 
Washington. Nor did they understand Americans 



*A report in the proceedings of the Alliance says: "Our own prestige 
depends upon the prestige of the Fatherland and for that reason we cannot 
allow any disparagement of Germany to go unpunished." 

An Alliance inspector of German schools reports that wherever these 
schools prosper the children remain German in spirit and sentiment even to 
the third generation. 

Professor Kuehnemann of Breslau, who lectured in this country under 
the auspices of the Alliance says : "The Germans in America can offer their 
Fatherland no greater evidence of faithfulness than by working to the end 
of keeping America aloof from England." 

At its last national meeting, the Alliance said that "only with a knowl- 
edge of the history of German politics and culture could an understanding 
of American history be acquired." (Ohlinger, pp. 42, 4.3, 49 and 50.) It 
is not quite plain how the history of the spirit of the Teutonic Knights 
which now rules Germany could help the children of America to understand 
her foundations of liberty, all of which rest upon Anglo-Saxon soil. 

Twenty-six 



when they thought that their excuses for their treat- 
ment of Belgium would be acceptable. Belgium had 
wronged no one. There liberty was preserved ; Belgium 
was living her life of happiness and prosperity in a 
high degree. Her country was her own. When her 
people saw their country invaded, their soldiers killed, 
their cities seized, their homes occupied, the least the 
Germans could do was to treat with gentleness the 
crazed few who exercised the right of self-defence. In- 
stead, they did things which made it seem that Attila 
was back again in Gaul. 

In the face of Bismarck and von Buelow and prac- 
tically the entire German opinion, now comes Profes- 
sor Muensterberg, in September, 1915, and says that 
Germany is as much self-governing as America, that the 
ministry is responsible to the Reichstag and that the 
American President can decide upon war all by 
himself. Muensterberg is the ninety-fourth professor. 
The German university apparently teaches nothing 
which contributes to an understanding of evidence. 
It has filled the world with declarations which it is 
charitable to class as German axioms, to the German 
professorial mind requiring no proof.* 

But Professor Muensterberg says something more. 
He says that the Germans in America felt it their 
sacred duty to foster German ideals and virtue in their 
American homes and their American cities, and make 
this country a better and nobler country. This, he says, 
was having its effect against the spirit of recklessness 



* In the Yale Review, July, 1916, is an article, "Autocratic Government 
in Germany," by Professor Kuno Franck'e, remarkable for its amazing omis- 
sion of the facts which show that Gennan government is, as Gneist says, 
"absolutism under constitutional forms." 

Twenty-ieven 



masters and the State is simply their representative 
acting for them. There is no room in this country for 
government by the people and a government by the 
over-individual soul — alias autocracy. 



And so, Americans cannot agree with Germans in 
America without a surrender of their own political 
ideals; for there can be no blending of American and 
German political ideals. What will Americans do? 

When an American looks upon his political history 
extending from the German tribes in England, in 
whose assembly no man dictated, to Abraham Lincoln 
standing upon the field of Gettysburg pledging the 
nation to the defense of government by the people, that 
American is looking upon a mighty heritage. This 
heritage is not for the Anglo-Saxon alone ; it is for all 
who come and accept it. It is for the Catholic, the 
Protestant, and the Jew, the Russian, the Pole and the 
Hungarian, as well as the German. But there must 
be no divided allegiance ; no attempt to blend Ameri- 
can political ideals with old-world political ideals 
which have been the mortal enemies of civil liberty 
since the world was. Americans will make it their 
work to preserve their heritage. The struggle which 
shakes the world today is the old struggle of democracy 
against autocracy. That is how England and France 
are fighting our battle. Americans can sympathize 
with only one side in that struggle and that is the 
side which is in unison with their whole history. If 

Thirty 



that side wins, the German people will come out of the 
darkness in which they now live and with all their 
virtues, abilities, and means of happiness, success and 
prosperity, will stand side by side with us in the broad 
sunlight of liberty. If that side loses, Americans must 
brace themselves to meet an antagonist such as the 
world never saw before. But we have this — the Amer- 
ican is unterrified and not afraid and he is a long- 
winded fighter. 



In preparing this paper, in addition to standard his- 
tories, the writer is indebted to such works as Daw- 
son's "What is Wrong with Germany" ; Barker's 
"Modern Germany" ; Collier's "Germany and the 
Germans"; Von Buelow's "Imperial Germany"; 
Schurz's "Reminiscences" ; Ohlinger's "Their True 
Faith and Allegiance" ; and especially to "The Ger- 
man Emperor as Shown in His Public Utterances," by 
Christian Gauss, Professor of Modern Languages, 
Princeton University. 

Indianapolis, July 1, 1916. 



Thirty-one 



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PAT. JAN 21, 1908 



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